nhi

probably closer to a 4.5 than a full 5 (i think that the last 100 pages is where the book started to fall off for me) but this entire book was insane. my first eco btw

i did NOT understand all the historical references he was making (my degree was in STEM so frankly i have negative ass understanding), but i appreciated the way eco approaches various philosophies/religions/etc with both a curious and very sardonic eye rather than a pretentious one. and frankly...you don't HAVE to understand every single argument, every single historical event, every single random essay eco inserts into this book (despite there being like so many dense explanations and descriptions of it at a time) because this is a 500 page story about how everything means something–but because everything means something, that also means that everything is meaningless. history, life, death... etc.

like does it matter what happened at casale? in the grand scheme of things–historically speaking, and with regards to the novel–no, not really, because i think eco wanted to emphasize that this was a meaningless war. it meant SOMETHING to the generals that weren't fighting in it. but what about roberto, and his father, and their comrades who died on the field? they don't even know what they were fighting for, at least, roberto certainly didn't.

this argument applies to every major event roberto experiences. with saint-savin, the events post-casale, getting screwed over in france and subsequently shipwrecked, and left to go insane in the middle of the ocean...like i think the senseless misery of his life just breaks him. and roberto wants all this meaningless suffering to mean something! we all would. all throughout the book he is searching for meaning and he receives these answers that don't really satisfy him, though they provide some momentary comforts (usually the religious answers, or the technological inventions he's never seen before, etc).

so over halfway through the book, roberto tries to invent his own meaning–and what does that look like? a dying man's delusion? a story? how's that any different from us when we try to ascribe meaning to the suffering we experience in our individual lives?

favorite parts: when roberto found that room full of clocks (showed this chapter to my brother and when i asked what he thought he said “i think roberto is just cracked out of his fucking mind”), the essay on doves, the dream roberto has of meeting the blind man (this dream is actually my favorite passage in the entire novel), the debate with father caspar closely resembling (ha-ha) the debate saint-savin has with the abbe, saint-savin in general (i wish we got more of him!)...

i'm not gonna lie...this book also super reminded me of the house of leaves. the meta-narrative of it all, the story-in-a-story of it all, the ecstatic nihilism...i think that if eco did that post-modernist shit (i mean this respectful) of like weirdly formatted text, stuck some fake footnotes here and there in his essays, and some sheet music here and there for the daphne, the avg rating of this book would skyrocket

this book is soooo dramatic like a lot of the stuff in between made me feel like I was watching a viet dubbed Chinese drama, but the beginning and closing scenes were wonderful. every time duong thu huong was able to discuss the ability to make art under a communist regime made this a worthwhile read but so many annoying and dramatic events happen that you're just like “come on” halfway through! if only she'd focused on the former. this book has such potential to be amazing but ugh...also suong! girl! love yourself! damn!

sometimes i'll be reading this and im like jesus, jack!!! get over yourself!!! but i really liked his character at the end of the day. more than anything it was the prose that kept me going and the images robinson wanted to paint for us. there's sooo much sorrow. its so tender. the ending just left me in despair. hard to say if i can recommend this to anyone though. i think if you did like gilead you will appreciate this.